1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a stacking device for a sewing machine for clamping cloths to be delivered from the sewing machine and carried onto a cloth holding stand, and unclamping there to pile them up on the cloth holding plate.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A variety of stacking devices for piling up cloths delivered from a sewing machine to a cloth holding stand have been known. One of the well-known devices comprises, as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,126,848, chains which span over a space between sprockets, and jaws mounted on the chains which circulate together with the chain and are capable of being opened or closed, and are designed to open the jaws, so they can receive the cloths delivered from the sewing machine, when a chain engages with a sprocket and becomes arc shaped, and carry the cloths onto a table by clamping as soon as the clamp becomes horizontal, and to release the cloths upon reaching the other sprocket, thereby piling them up on the table.
In such a machine, however, as the clamp could only be opened or closed when it engaged with the sprockets, it was impossible to release the product at arbitrary positions between the sprockets, and as a result, the machine could be applied only to those products with a specific length. That is, it was not applied to products having a longer length than the distance between the axes of the sprockets, and even with products of a shorter length, the cloths tended not to be piled up neatly, because, when moving by clamping one end of the product, the product was moved in the state where the other end hung down and trailed.
In the above machine, the opening degree of the clamp differed depending on the diameter of the sprockets, and the machines sometimes lacked reliability in clamping and releasing the product depending on the type and description of the cloths, for example, for sprockets with a large diameter, when releasing the product, the opening degree of the clamp was too small to smoothly drop them, in particular, thick cloths, and when clamping the cloths, there was the anxiety that thick cloths or thin and tender cloths could fail to enter.